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When asked “Please tell me how you would rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields — very high, high, average, low, or very low?” people placed nurses, pharmacists and medical doctors at the very top as most trust worthy. At the bottom of the list, they ranked lowest in trust worthiness, Car salesman as least trust worthy and members of congress second to least trust worthy. HMO managers and Senators were also in the lowest quartile, along with Lawyers and Governors.

It is no wonder, then, that we are having such a difficult time implementing healthcare reform. It seems people value, need and trust healthcare and its direct practitioners, but are leery of politicians and bureaucrats.

Ironically, it can be said that healthcare reform has been designed and promoted by politicians. No wonder then!

The Gallup organization shares some survey data to give us perspective on the meaning and impact of the Obama presidency as it departs on a second term. Although public opinion can be fickle and surveys have traditionally been somewhat suspect as they tend to over sample middle class folks with telephones, stable addresses, speaking “the king’s English,” literacy levels, and a host of other things that make phone, written or even face to face surveys a bit skewed, the Gallup polls do shape public opinion and, if for no other reason than that they are interesting and are a part of the equation that shapes public discourse, they should be looked at and discussed. Check out what Gallup has to show us and give The Policy ThinkShop your opinion …. Leave us your comments below…

“During his fourth year in office, an average of 86% of Democrats and 10% of Republicans approved of the job Barack Obama did as president. That 76-percentage-point gap ties George W. Bush’s fourth year as the most polarized years in Gallup records.”

Most Americans can correctly identify the relative positions of the Republican and Democratic parties on the major issues of the day. But a review of what Americans know about the political parties shows that the public is better informed about the partisan affiliations of two popular recent presidents – Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton – than it is about the positions of the parties on key issues that dominate the current national debate.

About seven-in-ten (71%) know that the Republican Party is considered to be the more conservative party. And majorities can correctly place the parties relative to each other on current issues that define the liberal-conservative divide, such as taxes, gay rights, abortion, and defense spending.

But the latest News IQ survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted March 29-April 1 among 1,000 adults, finds considerable variance in what the public knows about the parties. While 67% correctly identify the Democratic Party as more supportive of raising taxes on higher-income people to reduce the budget deficit, far fewer (53%) identify the Republican Party as more in favor of reducing the size and scope of government.

Six in 10 Americans favor Congress passing the so-called “Buffett Rule,” which would mandate a minimum 30% tax rate for Americans with a household income of $1 million per year or more. Majorities of both Democrats and independents favor the policy, while a majority of. …

Economic issues continue to be the public’s highest priority as the 2012 State of the Union approaches. Fully 86% say that strengthening the economy should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year, and 82% rate improving the job situation as a top priority.

The annual policy priorities survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 11-16 among 1,502 adults, finds that the federal budget deficit stands out as the fastest growing policy priority for Americans, largely because of increasing Republican concerns about the issue. Fully 69% rate reducing the budget deficit as a top priority — the most in any of the Pew Research Center’s annual policy priority updates going back to 1994.

Public discontent with Congress has reached record levels, and the implications for incumbents in next years elections could be stark, according to the the latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 7-11. Two-in-three voters say most members of Congress should be voted out of office in 2012 – the highest on record. And the number who say their own member should be replaced matches the all-time high recorded in 2010, when fully 58 members of Congress lost reelection bids – the most in any election since 1948.

News outlets generally like to claim a separation between their editorial pages and their news pages. The Washington Post has long ignored this distinction in pursuing its agenda for cutting Social Security, however it took a big step further in tearing down this barrier with a lead front page story that would have been excluded from most opinion pages because of all the inaccuracies it contained.

When asked which economic issue worries them most, nearly twice as many Americans cite the job situation as do the federal budget deficit (43% to 22%), according to a survey conducted Sept. 1-4 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. Just under one-in-five (17%) say they are most worried about rising prices and 11% say their chief concern is the financial and housing markets. When the question was asked in July, concerns about jobs topped the budget deficit by a smaller margin — 39% to 29%. Since then, more Democrats cite the job situation as the economic issue that most worries them (55% today, 43% in July), while the percentage of Democrats citing the budget deficit has fallen (from 24% then to 12% today)

In seemingly endless times of “trash talk” that led to an improbable and unpopular political victory, the newly minted president clamors: “Now arrives the hour of action.” Fleeting relief comes to the nation as the transition […]

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